Alpha 13 Preview

Alpha 13 is just around the corner.

Here are a few of the features we’re excited to introduce in this next update:

1. Planetary Cutaways

Cutaways can now be seen for any planetary body, which offers a nice visual representation of its material composition. Below you can see the cutaway for Jupiter’s moon, Europa.

2. Mars Climate Simulation

Our climate scientist has been working on expanding the climate model beyond Earth. Mars brings a whole new set of challenges. It’s not just a matter of plugging in Mars’s values into the existing calculations; there are fundamental differences which change the basic parameters of the model. For example, unlike Earth, so much carbon dioxide in Mars’ atmosphere freezes out every year that the atmospheric pressure drops and rises seasonally.

3. Collision Rewrite

Major improvements to the underlying physics will bring performance boosts and better collisions more of the time, as well as pave the way for some future improvements and features. Take a look behind the scenes of collisions in Universe Sandbox ² in the video below, made by Thomas, our numerical physicist.

4. Radial Velocity & Light Curves

It’s now possible to graph both radial velocity and simulated light curves, two key components in methods used for detecting exoplanets. 

And we have a few more updates and fixes in the works.

We will post an announcement on the forum when Alpha 13 is available in Universe Sandbox ² Alpha Discussion. Steam will automatically download the update.

If you do not already own Universe Sandbox ², you can buy it now to get instant access to the alpha and receive free updates up to and including the final release.